squarespace
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- _salisae_
I have two smallish clients asking about squarespace as a solution for their website. One is a jewelry designer and the other is an event coordinator. In your experience, what are the cons of going with this kind of solution vs. a custom yet fairly simple web build?
- ukit0
From what I understand Squarespace is a more niche solution that is easy to set up but forces you to build your site entirely through their online UI. In other words, you'd be choosing a premade template and customizing it, perhaps adding your own stylesheet or something, but it would still be rather limited.
For any kind of half*way serious site I'd gravitate more towards Wordpress, which is similarly easy to set up but allows you to host the site on your own server and have a lot more flexibility in terms of configuration. It's pretty much what everyone uses these days so you'll have the benefit of any problem you run into already being solved by someone.
- _salisae_0
CONS – Squarespace
Higher monthly fees for web hosting, which may ultimately end up costing more than a custom web site. You may be forced to pay for an upgraded status just to get a specific feature (IE a calendar) on your web site.No matter how easy it sounds, those who want to build or edit a site must learn new software, read instructions and generally be motivated to problem-solve.
You are married to your web host, since they own the software. Moving your web site to another host would be difficult to impossible. Taking your templated site design with you when you go would probably be a copyright violation.
Like all user interfaces, web building software has limitations when compared to custom designs. Sure, you can get your logo to appear on your web site. But can you get it sized right, with the right background color, in the right place? There is no comparison to what a good designer can do when working directly with the HTML and CSS code.
Since these sites are database driven, pages may be slower to load, and search engine optimization may be compromised (depends on your host / software).
- googled after asking – sorry. i am a little out of the template site loop so i appreciate all input._salisae_
- ukit0
Well any Wordpress site is going to need to be coded in HTML/ CSS, same as any site. What Wordpress does is provide a way to structure your PHP-based site so that you can easily edit the content in a nicely-designed CMS.
I think this part is key: "No matter how easy it sounds, those who want to build or edit a site must learn new software"
What would you rather learn, some company's boutique (and ultimately, limited) way of building sites, or a tool like Wordpress/ Expression Engine, etc., that gives you much more flexibility and is reusable on more projects?
Maybe you don't want to learn it personally, in which case just hire a developer, but I think the Squarespace approach will just be more trouble than its worth in the end.
- _salisae_0
from the sounds of it .. the jewelry client would be best with an e-commerce template solution like big cartel and the event client would be best with wordpress.